pepinator 10 hours ago

Switzerland has just 8 million people, which are divided into two big language groups. And most people speak (or at least understand) English. So, it's natural for the algorithm to converge to content in English.

  • elliotec an hour ago

    This is simply not true. Even standard German is a second language in Switzerland. I’m Swiss.

  • epolanski 7 hours ago

    Lived in Switzerland and this is really not true.

    What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages (German, French and Italian) children and teens at school focus on learning one of the other two regions they are not from.

    In particular this leads to French and Italian cantons to be moderately fluent in each other's language. Strikingly when I lived in Lausanne, more people knew Italian than English. English was really not on their radar (plus, add that francophones are kind of elitist when it comes to languages and don't really like to consume content that is not in french).

    In German speaking Switzerland proficiency in English was still subpar from most of the rest of Europe when walking in a shop or going to a restaurant.

    • secstate 7 hours ago

      Not to derail, but when I was in Switzerland, I found the German Swiss to be far more elitarian about NOT learning French, than the other way around. And French Swiss being a minority, they kinda got treated as other or less-than in the bulk of Switzerland. But all German Swiss are at least willing to try English, while the French Swiss tend to avoid English, so maybe that's where the vibe comes from?

      • oblio 7 hours ago

        For both you and OP, first of you, thank you for "elitarian", but even after reading the definition, I still think you both meant "elitist".

        And even though I probably tend to agree with both of you, it's kinda funny to blame French or German speakers about being elitist against English speakers, of which native speakers are notoriously monolingual :-)

    • sschueller 6 hours ago

      Switzerland has 4 official languages and English is not one of them.

  • Pooge 9 hours ago

    > And most people speak (or at least understand) English.

    This is wrong. In cities where there's a lot of tourism, they might understand. Most Swiss people only speak their local languages (German or French). As for those living in Ticino, they tend to be better polyglots.

    • Lukas_Skywalker 8 hours ago

      That doesn‘t match my experience.

      About 40% of all Swiss inhabitants speak English at least once a week [1].

      Anecdotally, I can't think of a single acquaintance younger than 50 years old that doesn't speak fluently. Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.

      Some of my German speaking friends even talk in English to French speaking people, even when both have learned the other‘s respective language at school.

      [1]: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerun...

      • Pooge 8 hours ago

        > Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.

        We learn the other's respective language for 7 years, too. Yet, as you pointed out, people speak in English because there is no willingness to learn and apply the other's language.

        Some of my friends speak English fluently, but I have a very hard bias as I work in IT. My whole family doesn't speak any language other than French. Most of the people I've been to school with don't come close to speaking English casually. None would watch an English content creator.

        Due to the shared heritage between the English and German languages, perhaps it's different in the German-speaking region. If you ask someone slightly complicated English questions, they might not be completely lost - after all, some words share the same etymology. But Switzerland is absolutely not an English-speaking country at all.

    • seanmcdirmid 8 hours ago

      I met plenty of people in Lausanne who didn't speak English, or at least didn't want to speak English (it is hard to tell, and anyways, it doesn't really matter). I visited Montreal shortly after my 2 year stay in Lausanne ended and I was surprised on how multi-lingual people were there.

      • lcouturi 4 hours ago

        Well, it makes sense. Canada still has a significant English-speaking majority. Even if Québec in isolation has a French-speaking majority, there's a very large incentive for French-speaking citizens to learn English because their province is surrounded by primarily Anglophone regions.

        There are also other factors at play. Montréal has a fairly large community of native English speakers and receives a lot of tourism from Anglophone Canada and the United States due to its status as the largest city in Québec (and second largest in Canada). It also gets a lot of immigrants, many of which are (at least initially) more proficient in English than in French.

        I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English. It also doesn't border any English-speaking countries. It seems English is mostly used as a lingua franca for communication between citizens who don't otherwise share a language rather than due to the direct presence of native Anglophones. Also, Romansh aside, all national languages of Switzerland (French, German and Italian) are spoken in areas that directly border a country where that language is the national language (France, Italy, Germany/Austria). With Switzerland being in the Schengen Area, its linguistic regions may be considered to be part of a much larger individual linguistic communities, which I feel may also diminish the need to learn other languages.

        • seanmcdirmid 3 hours ago

          > I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English.

          The language of French Switzerland is French. You'll never hear German, Italian, or Romansch. If you only spoke German and not French or English, you really couldn't live there very effectively (only places like Bern or Basel are truly multi-lingual), yes you'll get your official docs in German but then what? I assume the same is true in German speaking Switzerland, and I have no idea about Italian Switzerland.

          If a Swiss German and Swiss French met for coffee, what language do you think they would wind up speaking? Perhaps English if neither had comfortable fluency in the other language. Not to take away from your point, but English can get you really far in this world.

    • paulg2222 8 hours ago

      It is not German, but Alemannic.

      • Pooge 8 hours ago

        I'm sorry if this sounds offensive or derogatory. But as a Swiss person, I've never heard anyone call it "Alemannic". Whether it be foreigners, Swiss-French speakers or Swiss-German speakers, everyone called it "German".

crucialfelix 7 hours ago

It depends what you interact with. I tried it fresh today and it quickly decided I'm a Berliner muslim who likes Nigerian food because I lingered for a minute on something. That interest graph is very fast and volatile.

sushid 5 hours ago

Uhh... that's kind of how these algorithms work. I presume you interact (i.e. don't scroll past) with a lot of the English posts. It's going to index on that and show you more English content. When I'm abroad, I might see a few posts in their native language but the algorithm will revert to showing English posts about the city/country once it realizes I'm not really jiving with Portuguese posts, for example.

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financypants 9 hours ago

i mean, we all have the algorithm tailored to what we want to see, so the parent comment here is kind of a moot point, right?

  • datavirtue 7 hours ago

    I joined TikTok and was immediately barraged with naked young girls. Haven't been back since.